


Bail and Bowties

by asterCrash



Category: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 19:29:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17167985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asterCrash/pseuds/asterCrash
Summary: Liv's got a month off waiting for her trial, why not pay an old flame a visit?





	Bail and Bowties

**Author's Note:**

> Don't give me that look we were all thinking it.

Liv straightened her bowtie one more time, a minute adjustment that probably had no impact on her overall appearance but was certainly a banal enough tick to let slide. The bow tie was, as far as she was concerned, the strong point of the entire outfit. The pants were slimming but impractical and had nothing in the way of pockets, the jacket was striking but she resented the amount of tailoring it had required to make room for her arms. She actually didn’t mind the loafers at all, it was a shame they were completely impractical for the lab, but given the terms of her bail forbade her from so much as a home chemistry set till the trial, she was stuck doing a lot of theoretical work. Even that was hard, her backup hard drives were intentionally difficult to access and New York’s finest were doing their best to confiscate every device she’d ever logged into. Some days bribing her way through the judicial system barely seemed worth it.

She only noticed she’d gotten distracted because she straightened her bowtie again, which further cemented its position as her favourite part of the outfit. Dressed to kill, figuratively for a change, she skipped her way up the steps of the unassuming little house in Queens and avoided the doorbell in favour of a few quick taps on the front door with the backs of her knuckles. She checked her breath quickly, perfectly inoffensive, the outrageously expensive flowers she’d acquired were worlds nicer than the wilting bouquets strewn across the front lawn and frankly, she thought this all felt perfect.

After all this time, she was going to be the bigger person, it was going to be great!

One more quick bowtie adjustment.

The door opened to reveal a shocked May Parker, standing with her mouth agape at Dr. Olivia Octavia’s frankly stunning outfit.

Liv stepped forward with her best dashing grin, pushed her flowers into May’s pliant hands and said the words she’d been rehearsing all the way here: “I forgive you.”

She let May be stunned for a while longer while she stepped inside and took a look around. The cleanup was top notch, you could barely tell there’d been a super brawl here not two weeks ago. Damage Control’s work, if she were to hazard a guess. She didn’t bother looking at the family photos, appreciating instead the juxtaposition of the new couch right across from the old TV. It was anachronistic, she loved anachronistic.

“You forgive me?” May spluttered at last, not sounding nearly as appreciative as Liv had hoped.

“Yes, absolutely. I know it’s been a while, but hey, life’s short and with the trial coming up I have a lot of free time on my hands so I thought-”

May was flushed, which was to be expected, though it did make Liv worried she might have overdone it with the outfit. Should she have ditched the bowtie?

“I broke up with you.”

“Yes, and I forgive you for that. We don’t have to dwell on the past, we can just pick up where we left off. Dinner, drinks, dancing, well okay maybe not dancing, the tracking bracelet is such a buzzkill.”

“You’re a  _ supervillain _ .”

“Allegedly! Such a strange term though. ‘Superviillain’, as if they can’t help but complement genius even as they try to control and punish it. But that’s nothing to worry about, the trial’s not for another month yet, plenty of time to relax. You know it’s funny, if the collider didn’t explode there’s no way my calendar would have been this open, so I guess you have to take the good with the bad and move on to the next funding grant. I’m thinking something with the cloud next time. Everyone’s always talking about ‘the cloud’ but nobody’s talking about using genetically engineered pigeons to propagate mesh networks across a city! Well except for ethics review boards and they’re about as fun as you’d expect-”

“ _ Olivia _ ,” May snapped. Her features were turning a cold shade of angry.  “I think you should leave.”

“What?” Liv was incredulous. May held her flowers carelessly, down by her side, as if she had no appreciation for how hard it was to steal a bouquet of flowers under constant police surveillance.

“I want you to leave, Liv, and if you have any respect for me you’ll leave quietly.”

“You’re over-reacting, I just stopped by to say hi and invite you out for dinner, like old times!”

“I’m not interested.”

Liv realised she was trying to fix the bowtie again, but instead she’d just managed to mangle the knot beyond repair. With a sigh she tugged at the knot till it came loose and popped open the first few buttons of her shirt. Then she let her arms snake out from their perfectly-tailored hidden holes in her suit jacket and set them loose.

One arm grabbed both May’s hands together and pinned them to the wall behind her, lifting her off the grounds till her feet dangled freely. Another was waiting perfectly in place to catch the dropped bouquet of flowers, bringing them back for Liv to breathe in deeply. They had a lovely aroma, but they were absolutely nothing compared to the smell of burning ozone that she’d become so used to working on the multiverse collider. She might need to get a tesla coil for her apartment just for the ambiance.

Her remaining arms planted firmly on the ground and lifted her up into the air, lifting her up until she hovered less than a foot away and a few inches over her ex-girlfriend.

“I don’t know why you’re making this so hard,” she said, waving the bouquet in front of May, taunting her. “I said I forgive you! We can go back to the way things were, before the breakup, before all those awful things I said, before  _ spider-man had to ruin everything _ .”

“Hey, that’s just what I do,” quipped a new, yet equally irritating voice. Spider-man was standing in the front door, though he’d been watching them invisibly for who knows how long. New hero or not, she was looking forward to dissecting the bug behind that mask one day. “I was just nearby keeping the neighbourhood friendly and noticed you had an Octopus infestation you might wanna deal with. You need a hand, Mrs. Parker?”

“Take off, kid,” May said, sounding about as resigned to her fate as someone dealing with an ex-girlfriend could. “I can handle this.”

“Uh, I… hmm. Okay, just checking but is there like a secret code that I’m supposed to know if you want me to pretend to leave but really attack her from behind once she thinks I’m gone?”

“No, kid. Get out of here.”

“Oh- Um, yeah I can do that. Catch you next time!”

With a quick few thwips he was gone, though Liv doubted he’d gone far. May was still hanging from the wall and she was still towering over her, though the interruption had managed to transmute all her menace into awkwardness.

A long moment of silence passed between them as Liv tried to re-order her script and get them back on track. Really the whole thing needed to be written down as a failure and they could try again in six months or whenever next she had a month with nothing to do while awaiting trial.

“How were you expecting this to go, Liv?”

May didn’t look pitiful, she didn’t look scared. She didn’t look phased at all. It was part of why Liv had fallen for her to begin with. Completely unflappable. Liv was the kind of scientist who appreciated that in a partner. You needed someone who could roll with the unexpected side-effects rather than run screaming. Someone who met challenges head-on, even when they had nothing but their wits and a set of telescoping semi-autonomous medical plastic limbs to work with.

She lowered both of them to the ground, though she kept May’s arms pinned above her head.

“I was going to invite you out to dinner,” she said weakly.

“I don’t want to go to dinner, Liv.” May’s voice had gotten soft, gentle. “We broke up a long time ago. It was fun, but we’re very different people.”

“That’s not true.”

“We’re different enough.”

Liv felt tears stinging at her eyes and fought to stay angry, to hold on to her sense of indignity. She tensed the arm holding May’s wrists up above her head, pinning her harder against the wall, even though there would be no extra pressure on her wrists.

“How about I just wait here until you change your mind?”

May looked disappointed at that, she didn’t make any move to escape or to struggle. Liv wasn’t yet beyond being shamed. 

“Would you really want to go if you had to force me?”

Liv deflated. She probably wouldn’t.

Her arms retracted back into hiding under her suit jacket, leaving May standing against the wall rubbing her wrists and leaving the flowers resting on the floor. Tentatively, she stepped forward to help May rub feeling back into her wrists and shoulders.

“This isn’t because of what you said,” she was quick to clarify, “there can just be some pretty serious health consequences of holding that position for too long. This is just polite.”

She couldn’t read the look May gave her at that, wry perhaps, but she let Liv quickly, mechanically help her restore circulation to the affected areas. It had been a while since she’d touched another person like that. She didn’t realise she hadn’t moved her hands away until May gently touched her elbow. The look she gave then was even more difficult to decipher, something like nostalgia but more melancholic. The feeling of knowing you can’t get back the thing you’re missing. Not everything can be rebuilt.

“It wasn’t all bad, was it?” Liv started to pull back, May’s hands drifting down her forearms as she did.

“No, it wasn’t bad at all.”

May’s hand was on her cheek, cold but warming as circulation continued to return.

“I’m sorry,” Liv said, though she couldn’t have said what for.

“I forgive you,” May said and then their lips were together, dry and unexpected at first, but the kiss deepened and everything was better in the world. Her trial, her company, her work, all of it was a distant second to this subjective experience.

It ended, because as close as she’d gotten, Olivia Octavius had not broken time and space last month and so entropy continued forward, but still the world was better for that kiss having happened. Her world at least.

“7pm Thursday,” May said, all business. “Dinner, no dancing. Home by eleven. Play nice and I’ll consider letting you take me to the opera.”

Liv must have brightened visibly because May blushed and avoided her gaze.

“Just one date to start with, that’s all. No staying over, no funny business and I want to see a maximum of two arms all night. And Liv?”

“Yes?”

“Wear the bowtie.”


End file.
